Christianity As Mystical Fact

AT THE TIME of the first beginnings of Christianity there appear in
ancient pagan culture conceptions of the world which seem to be a
continuation of the Platonic way of thinking, and which may be
understood as a more inward, spiritual Mystery wisdom. Such
conceptions started with Philo of Alexandria (B.C. 25A.D. 50).
(see Note 46)
From his point of view the processes leading to the divine take place in
the innermost part of the human soul. One could say that the mystery
temple in which Philo seeks his initiations is simply and solely the
innermost part of his being, and its higher experiences. In his case
processes of a purely spiritual nature replace the procedures which
took place in the Mystery centers. According to Philo sense-observation
and cognition gained through the logical intellect, do not lead to the
divine. They relate merely to what is transitory. But there is a path
by which the soul may rise above these methods of cognition. It must
step out of what it accepts as its ordinary  I .
It must be removed from this  I . Then it enters
a state of spiritual exaltation and illumination in which it no longer
knows, thinks and cognizes in the ordinary sense. For it has become
merged with the divine, identified with it. The divine is experienced in its
essence, which cannot be formed in thoughts or imparted in concepts. It is
experienced. One who experiences it knows that he can communicate this
experience only if he is able to imbue his words with life. The world
is a reflected image of this mystical reality, experienced in the
innermost recesses of the soul. The world has come forth from the
invisible, inconceivable God. A direct image of this Godhead is the
wisdom-filled harmony of the world, out of which material phenomena
arise. This wisdom-filled harmony is the spiritual image of the
Godhead. It is the divine Spirit diffused in the world; cosmic reason,
the Logos, the Offspring or Son of God. The Logos is the mediator
between the world of the senses and the inconceivable God. When man
steeps himself in cognition, he unites himself with the Logos. The
Logos becomes embodied in him. The spiritually developed personality
is the bearer of the Logos. Above the Logos is God; beneath is the
transitory world. Man is called upon to link the two. What he
experiences in his innermost being as spirit, is the cosmic Spirit.
These ideas are directly reminiscent of Pythagorean thought.
(see Note in Chapter 3)
 The center of existence is sought in the inner life. But this
inner life is conscious of its cosmic significance. Augustine's
statement, We see all created things because they are; and they are
because God sees them, derives from a way of thinking essentially
similar to that of Philo.  And in describing what and how
we see, Augustine adds significantly, Because they are, we see them
outwardly: and because they are perfect, we see them inwardly.
(see Note 73a)
We find the same fundamental idea in Plato
(see Note in Chapter 4).
Philo, like Plato, sees in the destiny of the human soul the closing act of the
great cosmic drama, the awakening of the spellbound God. He describes
the inner deeds of the soul in the following words: The wisdom within
man followed the ways of his Father, and shaped the different forms,
looking to the archetypal patterns. It is not a personal matter when
man shapes such forms within himself. These forms are the eternal
wisdom, they are the cosmic life. This is in harmony with the
interpretation of the folk myths in the light of the Mysteries. The
mystic searches for the deeper truth in the myths
(see Note in Chapter 5).
And as the mystic treats the myths of paganism, Philo handles Moses' story
of the creation. For him the Old Testament accounts are images of
inner soul processes. The Bible relates the creation of the world.
Whoever accepts it as a description of outer events, knows only half
of it. Certainly it is written, In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters. But the true inner sense of such words
must be experienced in the depths of the soul. God must be found
within; then He appears as the archetypal essence sending forth
myriads of rays, none visible to sense, all to the mind.
(see Note 74)
This is how Philo expresses himself. In Plato's Timaeus the words
are almost identical with those of the Bible: And when the Father that
engendered the universe perceived it in motion and alive, and a thing
of joy to the eternal gods, He too rejoiced.
(see Note 75)
In the Bible we read, and God saw that it was good.
 For Plato, for Mystery wisdom, as well
as for the Bible, cognition of the divine means to experience the
process of creation as one's own destiny. Thus the story of creation
and the story of the soul striving toward its apotheosis, flow into
one. Philo is convinced that Moses' account of the creation may be
used to tell the story of the soul which is seeking God. Everything in
the Bible acquires a profoundly symbolic meaning when seen from this
point of view. Philo becomes the interpreter of this symbolic meaning.
He reads the Bible as the story of the soul.

We may say that Philo's manner of reading the Bible is in harmony with
the trend of his time, which originated in the wisdom of the
Mysteries; indeed he relates that the Therapeutae interpreted ancient
writings in the same way. They have also works of ancient authors who
were the founders of their way of thinking, and left behind them many
monuments of the method used in allegorical interpretation ... the
interpretation of the sacred scriptures is based upon the underlying
meaning in the allegorical narratives.
(see Note in Chapter 10).
Thus Philo's goal was to discover the underlying meaning of the
allegorical narratives in the Old Testament.

Let us imagine where such an interpretation could lead. We read the
account of creation, and find in it not only a narrative of outward
events, but a representation of the ways which the soul must take to
reach the divine. Thus as a microcosm, the soul must repeat in itself
the ways of God, and its mystical striving for wisdom can take only
this form. The drama of the universe must be enacted in every soul.
The soul life of the mystic is the fulfillment of the prototype given
in the account of creation. Moses wrote not only to recount historical
facts, but to represent pictorially the ways the soul must take if it
desires to find God.

All this, in Philo's conception of the world, is contained within the
human spirit. Man experiences within himself what God has experienced
in the world. The Word of God, the Logos, becomes an experience of the
soul. God led the Jews out of Egypt into the Promised Land; He made
them undergo trials and privations before bestowing the Promised Land
upon them. This is the outward event. Let us experience it inwardly.
From the land of Egypt, the transitory world, passing through
privations which lead to the suppression of sensuous experience and
into the promised land of the soul, we reach the eternal. With Philo
all this is an inner process. The God Who was poured out into the
world, celebrates His resurrection in the soul, if His creative word is
understood and re-created in the soul. Then within himself, man has
given spiritual birth to God, to the Spirit of God that became Man, to
the Logos, to Christ. In this sense, cognition, for Philo and those
who thought like him, was a birth of Christ within the world of
spirit. The Neoplatonic conception of the world, which developed
contemporaneously with Christianity, was a continuation of Philo's
method of thought. Let us see how Plotinus (204269 A.D.) describes
his spiritual experience:

Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body into myself;
becoming external to all other things and self-centered; beholding a
marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the
loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the
divine; rooted within it; attaining the strength to set myself above
the higher world: yet, there comes the moment of descent from
spiritual vision to reasoning, and after that reposing in God, I ask
myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did my
soul ever enter into my body, the soul which, in its essence, is the
high thing it has shown itself to be, and What can it be that has
brought the souls to forget the Father, God, and, though members of
the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves
and it? The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will,
in the entry into the sphere of creation, and in the primal
differentiation with the desire for self-ownership. They conceived a
pleasure in this freedom and largely indulged in their own
self-glorification; thus they were hurried down the wrong path, and in
the end, drifting further and further, they came to lose even the
thought of their origin in the Divine. Just as children who are
immediately torn from their parents, and have for a long time been
nurtured at a great distance from them, become ignorant both of
themselves and their parents.
(see Note 76)
In the following words Plotinus
describes the path of development the soul should seek: Let not
merely the enveloping body be at peace, the body's turmoil stilled,
but all that lies around; earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air
and the very heavens be still. Let the soul be observed, externally as
it were, diffusing and flowing into the quiescent cosmos, permeating
it from all sides, and pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun,
throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all
gold, so the soul entering body of the heaven-opened world, bestows
life and immortality.
(see Note 77)

It follows that this conception of the world has a profound similarity
to Christianity. Among those who acknowledge the community of Jesus it
is said, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled, of the Word of life ... declare we unto you.
(I John 1: 13.) In the same way it might be said in the sense of
Neoplatonism, that which was from the beginning, which cannot be heard
or seen, must be spiritually experienced as the word of life.  The
development of the old world conception thus is split. In Neoplatonism
and similar conceptions of the world it leads to a concept of Christ
related only to the spiritual realm, and on the other hand it leads to
a fusion of this concept of Christ with a historical manifestation,
the personality of Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of John may be said
to unite these two world conceptions. In the beginning was the
Word. He shares this conviction with the Neoplatonists. The Neoplatonists
conclude that the Word becomes spirit in the innermost soul. The
writer of John's Gospel, and with him the community of Christians,
conclude that the Word became flesh in Jesus. The more intimate sense,
in which alone the Word could become flesh was provided by the whole
development of the old world conceptions. Plato says of the Macrocosm:
God has stretched the soul of the world on the body of the world in
the form of a cross.
(see Note 77a)
This soul of the world is the Logos. If the Logos
is to become flesh He must repeat the cosmic process in physical
existence. He must be nailed to the Cross and rise again. This most
significant thought of Christianity had long before been outlined as a
spiritual representation in the old world conceptions. This became a
personal experience of the mystic during initiation. The Logos
become Man had to experience this deed as a fact, valid for the whole
of humanity. Something which was a Mystery process in the development
of the old wisdom becomes historical fact through Christianity. Thus
Christianity became the fulfillment not only of what the Jewish
prophets had predicted, but also of what had been pre-formed in the
Mysteries.  The Cross of Golgotha is the Mystery cult of antiquity
condensed into a fact. We find the Cross first in the ancient world
conceptions; at the starting-point of Christianity it meets us within
a unique event which is to be valid for the whole of humanity. From
this point of view the mystical element in Christianity can be
grasped. Christianity as mystical fact is a stage of development in
the process of human evolution; and the events in the Mysteries and
their effects are the preparations for this mystical fact.